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Steve Stockman Can't Lose

John Cornyn saw it coming. Even with no real competition on the horizon, the senior senator from Texas had been hiring staff, building his network and choking his state’s Internet bandwidth with ads that hinted darkly at Texas’s political future without him. Cornyn, an 11-year veteran of the Senate, may have been named the body’s second most conservative member by National Journal, but after criticizing Tea Party hero Sen. Ted Cruz during the prelude to the government shutdown this fall, he had good reason to fear a threat from his party’s far-right fringe. As chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Cornyn had told sitting senators to be prepared for primary challenges—and he took his own advice.

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There were rumblings of a challenge from several corners. Tea Party leaders had tried to draft Rep. Louie Gohmert, and evangelical historian David Barton had flirted with running. When conservative activists in Texas spoke privately, other names cropped up—like Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael, and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. So when a challenger came—even if he came, like an undergraduate with a term paper, less than half an hour before the filing deadline—Cornyn’s team was prepared.

But still, Steve Stockman?

Yes, that Stockman, the Republican congressman most famous outside Texas for his bombastic use of social media (his Twitter account is legendary, thanks to declarations like “Obamacare is less popular than Chlamydia” ) and outrageous proclamations (like his now-infamous “If babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted” bumper sticker). For the most part, other Republicans here in Texas seem merely to tolerate him—or, at best, appreciate his ability to fire up the grassroots while maintaining their distance. (One long-time Republican strategist told me the Texas congressional delegation had adopted what he termed the “rabid dog approach” to handling Stockman.) Edward Chen, former vice chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, once summed up Stockman’s place in the GOP for Texas Monthly thus: “He’s a Republican. As a Republican, he’s on our ballot. And that’s about the situation.”

Just to be clear: Nobody in Texas thinks Stockman has a snowball’s chance of winning against Cornyn, and they’re probably right. “This is going to be an irritant,” says Matt Mackowiak, an Austin-based Republican strategist. “But it’s only an irritant.” Some argue that a failed primary challenge from Stockman will help burnish Cornyn’s credentials and distance him from his party’s far right. That may be true—and it may be true, as well, that Stockman’s campaign will help break the populist fever afflicting the state’s GOP.

Jason Stanford, a Texas Democratic political consultant, sees the race as a useful way to unravel one of the central mysteries about Stockman—one that’s been asked many times throughout his career: Is he serious? “It’s embarrassing to admit to the outside world, but there are a lot of people in Texas who think like Steve Stockman. He has a significant constituency,” Stanford says. “There’s a tendency among insiders here to give Tea Party people credit for not really believing what they say. Stockman’s candidacy will test the proposition.” (Disclosure: Cornyn was a recent sponsor of the political newsletter, Must Read Texas, that Stanford runs with Republican counterpart Mackowiak.)

For now, it remains entirely unclear what Stockman is looking to achieve—if he really thinks he can win; if he’s segueing to a lucrative post-politics career as the conservative movement’s troll-in-chief; or if, as some speculate, he’s running merely to raise money and retire his substantial campaign debt. Requests to speak with Stockman through his legislative office, campaign and spokesman went unanswered.

Whatever Stockman’s up to, a look back at his political career makes one thing clear: You don’t want to run in a Republican primary against Steve Stockman, even if the outcome is predetermined. Running against Steve Stockman is not fun. Steve Stockman doesn’t just burn bridges—he’ll burn your house down.

Also, sometimes Steve Stockman wins.

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If it weren’t for his career in politics, Stockman’s personal story might be a template for a certain kind of self-made man—the troubled-but-redeemed self-starter Texans love to love. Born to evangelical Christians in Michigan, he floundered young, dropping out of college and falling prey to what he called the “partying syndrome.” He was arrested a few times, and once faced a felony controlled substances charge when cops found 30 milligrams of valium in his underwear during a strip search. In 1979, at the age of 23, he took a bus to Texas, where he lived for about six months in Fort Worth’s Water Gardens, a downtown public park—a fact he often recounts when telling the story of his life.

Then he got clean, got serious, went back to college. He re-found Jesus. In 1989, he launched his first congressional campaign. Working as a computer salesman in Friendswood, Texas, he responded to an ad placed in a newspaper by Pol-Serv, the political wing of the Suarez Corporation, an Ohio-based direct mail firm angered by veteran Democratic Rep. Jack Brooks’s proposed tax policies on mail-order catalogues. Suarez offered to “help finance and provide expert campaign help to public-minded candidates who will run against Jack Brooks in the next election.” Stockman became the Suarez Corp. candidate, and Pol-Serv helped bankroll his campaign—providing "general consulting, brochure production and advertising" services to Stockman. Pol-Serv treated the services as a loan—but the loan was eventually written off.